Living the Heeler Life Since 2015

A Tale of Heelers

In February of 2015, we adopted Holly, a rambunctious six-month old Australian Cattle Dog mix. She was everything we wanted in a dog: incredibly smart, with great energy and a lot of spunk. Her effortless joy in even the simplest of life’s pleasures, like fresh air and a morning walk, stole our hearts.

It didn’t take long for her to take over our routines, and to rewrite them according to her wishes. She is an early riser, loves to be outdoors, and is always ready for a snack.

Along with taking over our lives, she took over my entire social media presence. Every post, photo, and update was about Holly. Eventually, I just accepted that my Instagram page was really about her anyway, and we leaned in to the “dog” side of Instagram.

I took up photography, in hopes of capturing her majestic beauty for the world. She took up modeling, because there’s nothing easier for her than being adorable.

We’ve made a lot of dog-loving friends on Instagram, and had the opportunity to work with some of our favorite small shop entrepreneurs, helping them share their amazing products with dog crazy people like us.

Smokey joined our family in 2020, after several months of searching for a blue heeler boy. In the midst of the pandemic, it was astonishingly hard to find and adopt puppies, so it took no fewer than three miracles for us to find him (in Utah) and bring him home.

He’s a very different dog than Holly. He’s not a fan of strangers, or strange dogs, so his training has been a new, challenging adventure for us. But with Holly’s help, we’re teaching him that the world isn’t scary, and that no matter what we are going to protect and love him.